United Airlines opens expanded training facility at Bush IAH to handle expected growth

HOUSTON - As busy airports and airlines try to accommodate the growing demand for air travel, United Airlines is betting heavily on Houston with a $32 million training center for flight attendants. 

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Construction on the 56,000-square-foot expansion, which doubles the size of what was already in place, started just before the pandemic. It's one of seven United training centers, around the world, that is mostly for continuing education. 

In Houston, however, every new flight attendant that United hires will train here. Inside the door, the first thing to see is a massive room of full-scale mockups, with seats and a cabin hatch, of every type of jet United flies. 

They help trainees learn how to open and close the cabin in every situation and emergency.

"To set them up for success, to know, when there's a situation, how to react and take care of the customers and get everyone out, it is invaluable," says United Airline's Carol Bertacchi. 

The new facility includes a first-ever 125,000-gallon aquatic center, for realistic training on water evacuations. There's also a full-size cabin where trainees simulate a flight, with passengers, where they're observed and recorded to troubleshoot anything that needs improvement. 

"This, really, is a state-of-the-art training facility that we're extremely proud of," says United's director of in-flight training Mo Quinn-Mariano, "Our other training facilities certainly have all the hard-core devices, but not all the bells and whistles (here)." 

With a little pomp and circumstance and the requisite ribbon cutting, the new training center is, officially, open for business. It will train more than 600 flight attendants, a month, totaling 4,000 for the year. 

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United says it is an investment in the city, and recognition that the two will continue to depend on each other. 

"Every single flight attendant we hire will go through this facility in Houston. So, we built it with an eye toward the growth we see eight, 10, 12 12 years down the line, and this facility can handle that," says United president Brett Hart. 

United is already one of Houston's largest employers, with more than 11,000 people on the payroll, and plans to hire another 1,800 this year. 

That's on top of being part of a massive redevelopment at IAH, that ties the city and airline together for the foreseeable future.